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Basic Information

Tomb Prospectors found out the glitch in Isz Root dungeons that prevents some hunters from generating all Isz dungeon variations, called "32 pool glitch".

Before going further here is brief summary on how Chalice Dungeons generation works in light of recent save-editing and datamining:

dungeons are not randomly generated. Instead, they are pre-set layouts the player generates from an existing pool. This revelation is what lead Tomb Prospectors to start an organized exploration to map all possible dungeon variations.

each root chalice has 100-200 possible layouts the player can pull. Isz root supposedly has 200 layouts.

the estimated total number of root dungeons is 2200. This number might be slighly off because recent exploration of Cursed and Defiled Root seems to indicate there are more than 100 layouts for this Root (100 is Zullie's initial estimation).

Months ago, /u/Kazin79 noticed there's something wrong with Isz dungeons when even after generating hundreds and hundreds of root dungeons, he was only able to get an extremely small amount of unique layouts compared to Pthumeru and Loran. After Zullie's discovery that Isz has 200 possible layouts, a more in-depth research began, only to reveal that certain players are only able to generate 32 different Isz dungeons out of the entire 200 pool.

This is how Tomb Prospectors big Isz exploration began, along with their research what could be possibly causing this glitch. Initial idea was that the player's level somehow affects the generation, as they tested more and more characters and it seemed like players above BL160 are stuck in this glitch. Further testing revealed that this is not the case and the current theory indicates that the player gets sucked into the 32 glitch after exploring certain amount of root dungeons. Now, Tomb Prospectors still don't know for certain what exactly is causing it. /u/MorosNyx has a theory that the glitch happens once the player gathers a certain amount of loot from Isz dungeons, which seems to be largely true, but it still need to be tested what kind of loot it is and if it's truly only tied to Isz loot and not all dungeons. As far as we know, once a player is stuck, there's no way out of the 32 loop and the only way to generate new Isz dungeons is to make a brand new character every time your current one gets stuck.

Sinister Isz seems to be affected as well. No other root dungeons show any sign of this bug.

The goal of small Tomb Prospector team (shoutout to /u/DrAnger90 who's been an invaluable help in managing all info and dungeon mapping!) is now to map all 200 possible Isz layouts. Big thanks to everyone who provided glyphs to test and explore!

The Isz Glitch is a bug that prevents certain characters from creating all possible Isz dungeons (there are 200 unique Isz and 200 Sinister Isz dungeons) and reduces the number of dungeons you can generate from the entire pool to mere 32.

For nearly a year it wasn't known what causes this glitch that doomed the characters to repeatedly generate the same 32 dungeons over and over again, and Tomb Prospectors were forced to create dungeon mules to be used only for generating Isz dungeons as it was the only way for them to create dungeons outside of the 32 common pool.

Today, it can be announced that Tomb Prospectors finally figured out what causes this glitch. Here it will be explained what they have learned about the Isz Glitch, and provide you the means to avoid it.

One of the very early theories was that the glitch is somehow tied to dungeon loot because it only occurred on characters that explored a large number of dungeons, yet it wasn't known what loot exactly and if it is truly only tied to Isz loot. The most plausible theory was that the glitch is related to unique coffin loot specifically as it consists of items you can only loot once and if you were to loot the same item again, it would be replaced by either Madman’s Knowledge or Great One’s Wisdom - this indicated that there is an event flag for each of these items that keeps track of what item you’ve already looted. This theory finally led Tomb Prospectors to a series of testing where were able to reliably replicate the Isz Glitch and pinpoint its source and factors.

There are 11 unique coffin items in Isz you can only loot once:

Top tier runes

Weapons

Other

Eye

Lost Kirkhammer

Blood Rock

Arcane Lake

Ludwig’s Lost Holy Blade

%Arcane Gem

Great Lake

Lost Threaded Cane

layer 4 %Nourishing gem

Great Deep Sea

Deep Sea

For testing this theory Tomb Prospectors created a new character, unlocked all story dungeons and conducted a number of testing sessions.

First testing simply consisted of creating 20 dungeons on the new character. As expected, this character was able to generate various dungeons from the entire 200 pool, as seen on tab “Test 1” in this sheet: Isz Generation Testing Sheet

All dungeons that belong to the 32 common glitch are highlighted in red.

After this, Tomb Prospectors looted several coffins in various dungeons and created another 24 Isz dungeons. As you can see in the second testing column, the character was severely glitched this time, with only a couple of Isz dungeons outside of the 32 common pool.

As a final test they only looted unique Isz items so that by the end of the setup, this character only had Isz specific unique items in their inventory, and created 24 Isz dungeons. All of these dungeons were from the 32 common pool, signaling that said character is entirely glitched, and that the cause of it were Isz coffin items, as seen in the final column.

Tomb Prospector's next series of testing, Test 4, consisted of looting only one item at a time and then creating 24 Isz dungeons after each one of them to see how the glitch progresses. This is where it gets way more complicated than previously thought the Isz Glitch actually is. It was found out there’s another “feature” that comes to play when you create a dungeon, a mechanic which is most likely supposed to ensure the next dungeon you create includes a different unique coffin item than the one you’ve looted previously.

All dungeons are internally sorted into a total of 15 groups (numbering starting from 0 to 14) with various amount of dungeons in each group based on dungeon depth and type. All of these groups are present in depth 5 Pthumeru and Loran while Isz only uses 12 groups. This information has been extracted from Bloodborne param files, and you can see it on tab Holy Grail - All Chalices, column N - BB, or on tab Dungeon Groups and coffin loot that has been formatted for better clarity.

From Tomb Prospector's final testing of Isz dungeon generation it became apparent that each group is related to one unique coffin item, and in Isz, by looting an item from certain group this group will become forever locked away for your character. These groups and related items are:

Group 0

Ludwig’s Lost Holy Blade

Group 1

Lost Kirkhammer

Group 2

Lost Threaded Cane

Group 3

Great Deep Sea

Group 4

Deep Sea

Group 5

Great Lake

Group 6

Arcane Lake

Group 7

Eye

Group 8

Blood Rock

Group 9

% Arcane gem / % layer 4 Nourishing gem

Group 10

?

Group 11

?

For example, if you create an Isz dungeon and loot the Eye rune from it, dungeon group 7 will not be included when you create the next Isz dungeon, effectively reducing the number of dungeons you can create on your character.

From this it’s obvious it’s very easy to get in the glitch since you can usually get more than one unique item in one dungeon. Practically, it can only take 5 or less dungeons to get your character glitched depending on which items you loot. This applies to looting items by using glyphs and false depth dungeons as well. Selling and/or discarding Isz runes and weapons will not get you out of the glitch. The event flag has been set, and the game still remembers you had these items, even if you get rid of them.

As you can see, groups 10 and 11 are marked with “?” as these two groups of dungeons are the final Isz Glitch phase. These are the two groups your character gets forever stuck in once glitched. Tomb Prospectors still don’t know for sure why these two groups are repeating and there are only theories. One such theory hints that dungeons in these groups should include loot that's for some reason missing or has been removed but the game is still trying to give you a dungeon that's tied to an item that's no longer in there, and ultimately gets stuck in a loop (aka Isz Glitch). The only two dungeon items that come to mind is Guidance tier 3 rune and Revered Great One Coldblood. Both of these items are in the official Bloodborne guide but are unobtainable in the game by normal means. They still exist in the files though, as it is possible to save edit them into your inventory. They just don’t have any drop table assigned to them.

As of now it isn't known if this mechanic works the same way in other chalice types as well but there will surely be similar testing in Ihyll and Loran dungeons in the future. It’s possible that it works similarly in other dungeon types with the difference that after obtaining all unique loot from them, the generation mechanic is reset and you are again able to create all dungeons from their respective pools. Still, keep in mind this is a theory for now.

Conclusion: If you want to stay completely out of the Isz Glitch, do not loot any coffins in Isz or Sinister Isz dungeons. Isz and Sinister Isz share unique loot, and looting an item in one will reduce the number of dungeons in the other as well.

The glitch happens gradually. Every time you loot a unique Isz coffin item, the number of Isz dungeons your character can create gets reduced. The moment you collect all unique Isz coffin items, your character becomes entirely glitched

Once a character is glitched, there’s no way out of it. You need to create a brand new character

While it’s impossible to generate dungeons out of the 32 pool once you are glitched, it’s possible to explore these dungeons via glyphs or Short Ritual Chalice